


and I've been feeling weak without it (only want a real, real love)

by smithens



Series: a love that won't sit still [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 1930s, Depression, Epistolary, Everyone Is Gay, Gender With A Capital G, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Married Life, Queer Friendship, Relationship Conflict, Richard "Dick" Ellis, Schmoop, Shell Shock, Through the Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: The danger always was that they wouldn't work in close quarters.But they do.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: a love that won't sit still [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747162
Comments: 31
Kudos: 86





	and I've been feeling weak without it (only want a real, real love)

**Author's Note:**

> title from [carly rae jepsen's "real love"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMHHyZf8LdE):
>
>> standing here with you tonight, how do we turn on the light?  
> I've got the feeling that the writing's on the wall  
> and I'm so used to the lie, and you're so down to deny  
> I've got the feeling you're the right thing after all
>> 
>> I go everyday without it  
> all I want is real, real love  
> and I've been feeling weak without it  
> only want a real, real love
> 
>   
> read [strange how I fit into you (there's a distance erased with the greatest of ease)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23708473) first.
> 
>  **content warnings/notes:** war trauma, post-traumatic stress panic responses, depression, Gender Roles within queer subculture, homophobia (internalised nature), relationship complications, slight sexual content, implied/discussed animal death & mistreatment, implied child abuse, implied sexual power imbalances. and SCHMOOP. schmoopy schmoop schmoop, to make up for all that other stuff.

_3/1/27_

_Dear T,_

_I don't feel I've much to say, but it felt wrong to go to sleep without writing to you when I've not done for so long now. Things here are much the same as they have been. If only my life were half so interesting as you seem to find it I might have stories to tell, but all the ones I can offer are made up._

_I am back in the city as of this morning, but only for the next two days before it's back to S.H. Somebody (not me) made a mistake in the assembly line up here and unfortunately the task of fixing it was delegated to me. Or perhaps not so unfortunately? This does give me the cover to post you a letter._

_As winter draws on my days are cold, gray and wet, but when I think of you I think of summer, and I am thinking of you always. I wish you were here with me, or that I were there with you._

_Tell me what's happening at Downton?_

_I miss you very much._

_Yours most faithfully,_

_R.E._

_P.S. The weather is probably worse there, isn't it? The grass is always greener the further it is away. But I reckon you must have fresher air than we do. That's hard to come by up in London. I've been taking it for granted at S.H. I'll have to be better about that now._

_P.P.S. I forgot to say happy Christmas. I hope yours was splendid._

_*_

_19/2/28_

_Dear T,_

_Back in London til Easter. We got in a few days ago, actually. I've yet to read the bulk of the letters you sent while I was away but now I'm settled up here I thought I'd be in touch, and I did get to some. Funny about the mistake with the date back in January. Happens every year. You'll have forgotten about that by now but I wanted to return the sentiment attached to your mockery—it's been seven months now since we met (L. and I came to Downton on 19/7) but it may as well have been seven years, for how close I am to you. I've never known a man as we know each other. It pleases me endlessly you feel the same._

_It does seem you've had an eventful holiday season. Just as you hoped, I was not "under a rock" all Christmas. Naturally the news of twin boys to a Marquess was well received upstairs. On a more personal note it sounds like the lass is lucky to have you in her corner. Jealousy over new arrivals is common at that age to begin with, and I can't imagine the situation is much improved by her "circumstances". I hope the poor thing keeps her friend Mr Barrow in mind once (now?) the family's returned to Northumberland._

_My condolences about the Dowager—I can tell you I've been more affected by these passings than I ever thought I'd be, too, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. Servants can get caught in the web easy when they work some place for a very long time, and you're approaching twenty years at Downton. And I'm sorry about your having to deal with Lady M. for the foreseeable future, as that sounds to me like more of a long-term toll._

_As for the nuptials they've been a long time in coming and I expect you'll be glad to be done hearing the betrothed wax on about the wedding. You'll have to tell me how it goes tomorrow. Be sure and remember to give the bride a dance, no matter how you're feeling. I know it's tough. Wish we had the privilege. I'll be thinking of you._

_Apologies for the brevity. I'm exhausted. Expect something to keep you warm at night once I'm not._

_Yours most faithfully,_

_R.E._

_*_

_4/3/28_

_Dear T,_

_Glad W. is working out already, gladder still you convinced the family to call him Bill, although it sounds like it didn't take much—sorry. I should have thought of that, given why you needed a new hire in the first place. But he's a hard worker and he'll be an asset to the staff. To tell you the truth he was burning the candle at both ends up here. The slower pace will be good for him, and add to that his parents will certainly be pleased he's closer to home. As am I, though I'm sorry to think I might be the last Ellis in the R.H._

_As for young A, if you don't mind my saying so he has more of a guiding hand than you did when you were a young man just promoted to first footman (the stories you tell—wish I'd known you back then), so I reckon he'll hop off the high horse before he starts riding for a fall._

_You'll want to keep an eye on those two. No chance of trouble with the housemaids, if you catch my drift._

_Yours most faithfully,_

_R.E._

_P.S. How's D. faring? You never did make it clear if she was the jilting or the jilted. Along those lines, I don't know what to tell you about finding another cook. How does the Abbey work without proper kitchen maids? Standard practice is to hire from within, surely?_

* * *

**York, July 1933**

When he wakes, he blinks his eyes open, sees that it's daylight—raining, but daylight—and then closes them again.

Saturday.

No work today.

At some point he'll come round to May's point of view and they'll go to being shut Sundays and Mondays like every place else, but he's going to savour the novelty of having a proper week-end while he can... _Novelty._ Thomas would say he should have gotten over it already. It's been twelve months. Christ, a year out from leaving service and he still gets giddy every Friday, only to wake up at six o'clock Saturday morning and get himself strung up over the lack of anything to do...

He hasn't heard a bell or a buzzer ring since he went to fetch Thomas out of Downton, and before that it had been months. He'd commented on having missed it, only a joke, really, and though Mrs Bates had laughed, Thomas had looked at him like he'd sprouted sunflowers out of his shoulders.

 _You're mad,_ he'd said, _it's the_ bells _that you miss?_

When you could miss having a maid to make your bed in the morning, or your meals cooked for you, he'd meant. Richard hadn't known what to tell him, though, and then Mrs Stuart had started asking him questions about _when he'd worked in the Royal Household_ and _was it really so glamourous as it seemed like,_ so he'd slipped the hook.

Thomas doesn't miss the bells, and Richard might as well accept it. There is to be no hypocrisy on this subject, so he will never be able to say _I told you so._ It's incomprehensible to him that a man who spent the last twenty-five years in service is able to carry on his routine all on his own without outside help, but he appears to be doing just that.

When Richard finally opens his eyes and rolls over, the man is wide awake and sitting up with a book open in his lap.

"Good morning, dear," Thomas says, sarcastic, but it makes Richard's heart flutter all the same.

"Morning," Richard mumbles.

Thomas closes the book and reaches down to ruffle Richard's hair. "You're a layabout, Mr Ellis, it's after nine."

Well.

That's not good. Did the alarm clock not go, or did he sleep through it? Or was it not set right in the first place?

"Was tired," Richard confesses. He has sleep in his eyes and his head feels heavy.

Meanwhile, Thomas is fully dressed, albeit with his jacket off, and seated on top of the covers, so he's likely been up for hours.

"You were." His thumb traces up and over Richard's eyebrow, at his temple and then his hairline at the side of his face. Richard breathes in slow, and on his exhale his voice slips out of him, a low tone from his throat; he feels so - "don't you shut your eyes on me," Thomas says, interrupting his ambling thoughts, teasing but still stern. "You'll be asleep all day, and then where will we be?"

Richard blinks.

He drags himself up at least to sit, and when Thomas slips his arm around his waist he takes it as permission to rest his forehead at his shoulder—and it must've been, because he doesn't bother him over it.

He does say, soft and tentative, "and you haven't been sleeping well, neither."

"Haven't I been," Richard mumbles.

Thomas makes a noise of denial.

"Oh."

"Yeah." A pause. "Look, if you don't want me to – "

"'S just bad dreams," he says.

"Every night?"

"Not every night, no."

"Bloody seems like it."

"Well," says Richard, "you're not here every night, are you."

Thomas shrugs, dislodging Richard from his shoulder, but he keeps his arm around him, still taking his weight. "Do you know what day it is?" he asks nonchalantly. _Thanks,_ Richard thinks. He always knows when to change the subject when it comes to things like this.

And today, that's a special question.

"Saturday?" says Richard. If Thomas can't tell he's joking he was replaced in the night by an imposter, but he still hopes playing the innocent doesn't blow up in his face. "When are you in to work?"

"After their dinner," Thomas says. "Two."

So he'll be heading out to get there by quarter til.

"It _is_ Saturday," he adds.

"Guess I'm not going anywhere, then."

"Not while I'm home, at least."

"Can't think of any observances in July," Richard says lightly. He nuzzles his cheek with his nose, prompting a giggle that he's sure Thomas finds very undignified but that charms him to no end. "Nobody's birthday."

"Oh, shit, Phyllis's is this week, actually."

"What?"

"Yeah," he says. "Fifty-one."

Fifty- _one._

Confused, Richard pulls away. "Why didn't either of you say last year?"

When it mattered more, traditionally.

Thomas raises his eyebrows. "Because you were moving house and couldn't've done anything about it even if you'd wanted to?"

"I would've wanted to," Richard tells him. "I would've sent a card at least."

Thomas shrugs. "Apologise when we see her this week, then."

He will.

"But it's just as well that it's not today _,_ " he goes on, eager, no matter how hard he's trying to hide it, "wouldn't like to have somebody else to worry about, would we?"

"I don't know."

"Well, if there's anything special we ought to be aware of…"

"Oh," Richard says. He can't stop himself from grinning any longer. "The anniversary of me moving back here?"

"Was a day ago, yes."

Thomas is smiling now, too, broad and unabashed the way he only ever gets in private or in places proven safe. Now that Richard's no longer draped over him, he starts unbuttoning his waistcoat. _You are very dear,_ Richard thinks, and in the back of his mind, _we'd have more time for this if you'd woken me when I wasn't up like usual,_ but he can't blame him for not doing something he never asked for and that likely wasn't in his best interests, besides.

He did need the sleep.

They probably won't get very much tonight, after all.

Richard swats at Thomas's hands and takes over the job for him.

"It wouldn't happen to be the anniversary of anything else, would it?" he asks, in one out of the handful of silly voices that never fails to make Thomas laugh—and this time's no exception.

* * *

_8/2/29_

_My dear T,_

_Chaos up here again. New words for the next time D. hosts a spelling bee in your servants' hall: "pulmonary" "septicaemia"._

_I'm in the entourage to Bognor. Can't promise a letter anytime soon. See enclosed apology._

_All my love,_

_R.E._

_*_

_7/2/29_

_My beloved,_

_Tonight I am overcome with thoughts of you—thoughts of your beautiful body beneath mine and your red lips parted in bliss, thoughts of your pale throat and the handsome sound of your voice as you cry out for me. As I touch myself I imagine it is your hand…_

_…_

_…without you my bed is cold. Til we meet again I shall think only of you, and after our parting the same._

_I miss you._

_Your faithful lover._

_X_

* * *

**York, August 1933**

"Might be late." Thomas is sitting on the bench to tie his shoes, with his legs spread more than they need to be to do the job properly. From his place leaning at the wall Richard finds it a difficult task not to look too close. "No need to wait up."

"I don't mind it," Richard says. He tries to sound casual, but Thomas looks up at him with a quirk at the corner of his mouth and raised eyebrows that make him feel seen right through.

"It's only whacking a ball around," Thomas says, somehow reassuring and irritated at the same. "And drinks. Won't be just me and Chris, if that's what you're worried about."

It never has been, and he knows it, which is why he's smirking.

If he _was_ worried about that, his concerns would not lie with Chris Webster, who to Richard's knowledge has been a perfect gentleman and stalliant defender of Thomas's monogamy every time they've met since the first. The problem is that the same cannot be said for the rest of the men in Yorkshire. Or in London. Frankly, probably in all of England and anywhere else they could find themselves—if only there were funds and time for that. _How can I help it if I'm irresistible,_ Thomas had said once, inordinately pleased with himself after the success that was Richard introducing him to his London friends who weren't in service, but then when they'd gotten back to their room at the pub he'd pressed Richard up against the wall and kissed him, and that had settled things.

He does deserve the attention. He went so long without any, after all.

And he has no trouble rebuffing advances.

Richard just… gets too attached.

But that isn't what he _worries_ about.

"Who else is going?" he asks.

Safety in numbers.

"Few people," says Thomas vaguely. "It's Percy's half-day."

"And?"

Thomas rolls his eyes. "Michael," he says. "Ira."

Richard nods. "Nobody new?"

"If there was, somebody'd've slept with him already," Thomas says drily. "So we'd know."

"And you're all headed to – "

"Bloody hell, do I need to write you a timetable?"

"Thomas, all I'd like to know is – "

But Thomas only laughs, shaking his head, and tension blossoms in his chest like morning glory—

"I did already," he tells him, with a sly smile that does away with the bloom in an instant. "Check the kitchen table after I've gone."

So he knew he'd fuss.

"As far as tricks go I've known better," Richard says, and despite his best efforts he doesn't manage to sound scolding. Thomas only shrugs, coy, smug. "Why after?"

"You'll find out."

Not promising, but the look on his face is too sweet for him to muster up the will to complain at the moment.

"Well," Thomas says, standing up to don his coat and grab his hat off the hook. "Anything else before I go?"

Richard's turn to shrug.

It gets him raised eyebrows and a cock of the head to one side.

 _Don't ask,_ Richard warns himself. _You shouldn't ask._

" – is Danny going to be there?"

Thomas laughs at him again; his cheeks grow warm. "He goes by Daniel now."

And has done for about the last decade, but that doesn't stop Richard from forgetting. "Right," he says, "is _Daniel_ going to be there, then?"

"They're not seeing each other anymore," Thomas answers, and Richard wonders if the amount of pleasure he seems to be taking in saying so is cause for concern. "But I'm sure he and I can meet up to talk about you some other time."

He shouldn't've asked.

Richard resists the urge to tell him to be cautious and discreet, and Thomas kisses him on the cheek before he takes leave.

The note on the kitchen table lists the park and the pub, as well as a neighbouring pub _(you know how Ira gets_ , Thomas put in the margin) and the addresses of people Richard would know nearby, including Ted, he notices, and that makes him feel better about the whole thing.

At the bottom he lists the attendees, complete with nicknames where applicable, somebody to get in touch with if it comes to the worst ( _but it won't, you'll see)._ When he wants to be Thomas is meticulous to a fault, and it shows, here. Holding the little piece of paper Richard feels a swell of fondness and gratitude that this is the man he's ended up with.

It's nothing worthy of waiting to read, however, or so he thinks until he sees the arrow at the bottom.

He flips it over.

Scrawled—not scrawled, nothing Thomas writes could be described as a scrawl; he's picky about his penmanship same as the rest as how he looks like—on the back is an additional name and contact, along with a note:

_Yes, Daniel will be there, too. Really, anyone would think you still had feelings…_

Bastard.

* * *

_10/4/30_

_My dear T,_

_Sorry for the wait. I don't know what you want me to say. I did not bring up the book and its adaptation to spark a conversation about my "nerves." I'm not in the habit of talking about my own time in the war and to put it plainly I don't intend to be. It's over and done with and has been for going on twelve years now. I did my bit back then, and it's high time I moved on with my life—looking round it's clear everybody else has done, even if they like to pretend differently when things like this come about. We've got new problems now, haven't we? If you're to worry about anything, worry about what this trouble in the market means for your job_

_10/4/30_

_My dear T,_

_Sorry for the wait. So much as I appreciate your concern, it's unneeded. I wrote to you while I was already under some stress—you'll be familiar with that, no rest for the wicked and those in service—and I'm afraid I may have given the wrong impression. You did say you'd read between the lines, and I'd ask that in future you keep to what's in ink on the_

_10/4/30_

_My dear T,_

_I know I've kept you waiting. If I'd the time to write you every day I would, I can assure you, but I'm sorry to say I don't. This would all be easier if you and I were closer, wouldn't it? As regards to your letter, it has never been my attention to keep anything from you. I'm sorry you feel that I have done, and I'll endeavour to be more forthright in future._

_If I may speak plainly, the reminder that I'm one among many was unnecessary—thousands of men have lived through this and of them all I'm hardly one worth worrying about. Not everyone made it four years unscathed; I'm lucky and fully aware of the fact. Your impression that I have been neglected somehow could not be further from the tru_

_*_

_25/4/30_

_My dear T,_

_Yes, I did get your letter from the end of March. Thanks for your patience—I know you don't like to go too long not hearing from me when I'm in London, and I can hardly blame you. I'm sorry about that. I'll have to make it up to you by writing as often as I can til we meet again and the hourglass flips back over._

_Here in the R.H. preparations for the Season are well underway…_

_…_

_...you know very well I'd want to see you if the Gs keep those plans, no need to beat around the bush. Let me know as soon as you do, if you would._

_With my love,_

_R.E._

* * *

**North Riding, October 1933**

"Nicer in June," calls Thomas over his shoulder. He's a few paces ahead of Richard, one hand in his pocket and one on his hat as he looks over the wood railing of the bridge.

The creek is rushing, but at this point the rain is only a sprinkle.

"Yeah," Richard says as he approaches. He's behind both because he meanders and because his boots aren't doing much to keep his feet from sticking in the mud. "But this isn't so bad."

Aside from his feet sticking in the mud.

"There was somewhere like this on the estate at Downton," Thomas says. "In the wood. But the water was never this high in October."

"Yeah," he says again. He feels out of sorts. It's the ground that's doing it; he's sensitive about his feet. "This one floods sometimes, further up the way—or it used to, in the spring."

A long time's passed since the days when he spent very much time here.

"Probably still does, then, doesn't it?"

Richard starts to stand on his toes to see over Thomas's hat and head but thinks again when he almost slips, instead stepping aside. He takes his hat off and tilts his head back, eyes closed, rain speckling his face as it falls through the trees above them. His nose is getting cold.

"You should wear your hair like that more often," says Thomas suddenly, and Richard takes a deep breath in, rain at his lips, before making to look at him again.

"Wet?"

"Curly."

Wet, then.

Thomas grins—he's unbearably handsome in all environments, but something about the gray and the mist makes certain features stand out. The blue of his eyes. The rosy in his cheeks. He hasn't smiled like this in a while. Several weeks back he'd come home looking decidedly blue, and Richard had asked, _what's happened,_ expecting that something had, but Thomas had only drawn his head back and squinted at him. _Nothing, why?_

_Just look a bit down in the mouth is all._

_Cheer me up, then._

Nothing had come of it.

Since then he's been watching carefully, but if anything's going on that's giving him trouble Thomas is disinclined to say… so Richard suspects there isn't. He's always been forthright before, even if it was on paper and not in person.

And Richard's not fond of being looked at like he's an idiot when he suggests that Thomas might be feeling unhappy, nor the roundabout conversations that result from it, so he's stopped bringing it up.

"I thought you preferred me in full feather," he says. He sticks his elbow on the railing and puts his weight to that side, crossing one calf behind the other; Thomas looks at his arm and makes a face. Not his arm, then; his sleeve, probably.

"Wish _you_ did," Thomas tells him, pointed.

The sleeve.

It's a greatcoat; it's meant to get dirty.

"I'll get it out if it stains."

"Will you."

Richard can't quite tell if that tone's to do with his capability to clean his own clothes or ruffled feathers. He says, projecting a bit more nonchalance than he feels, "well, I was a valet for nineteen years."

"But I do the laundering."

_If I try to take care of my own you don't let me._

"We've talked about this."

The last thing they need to have on a footpath out in the uplands is a lovers' spat.

"Yes, we have, so you should know by now I only do it so I don't have to put up with you whinging when _you_ do it," Thomas says, matter of fact. "And 'cause you don't know how to do all of it right."

 _All I had to do was learn,_ he'd said in the summer. What he really means is he enjoys doing it himself.

"Really you should be thanking me in advance for taking care of it, when that's what you're like."

He gestures at him. The frown is gone. Making fun of him always seems to cheer Thomas up.

"Thanks," Richard says, bright.

"You're a rascal, Richard Ellis, and no mistake."

In lieu of response Richard plucks Thomas's hat off of his head and kisses his cheek. His fringe is falling loose over his forehead—still black but grayer with every year that passes, handsome, and to remain unmentioned for as long as it takes for Thomas not to frown when he does—and he goes pink when Richard pulls away.

"Mr Circumspect," he says, eyes lowered, sweet and surprised as the first day they knew.

This time Richard gets his mouth, and Thomas reciprocates the kiss with enthusiasm.

"Wait," he says when it breaks, breathless, "wait, is anybody around," not nervous but hopeful. Richard can't hear splashes, footfalls or wagon wheels, and they're the only ones they've seen outside today, so instead of answering he slips his arm around Thomas's waist, lets him lean back over the edge, and kisses him again.

The romance of it is worth the frozen fingers and damp coats they're left with when they're back at the house. After shucking off their shoes and coats, hanging their hats, they trudge up the stairs, and Richard is shivering. The accommodations don't help—it's an attic room, and John and Cordelia have it set up with two single beds. If they were in York, Richard would probably drag Thomas into bed and drape him in all the quilts they have, but they're not in York, so they have to make do with what they've got.

As always Thomas leaves his layers (thankfully the most soaked ones are down in the mudroom) in a heap on the floor, and Richard is only able to resist sniping about it because he can tell he's been exhausted—this holiday-of-sorts was meant to help, but with the weather and the walking he's worried it'll only add to the burden on his shoulders.

If he wants a job done the way he likes it he ought to do it himself, he knows: that was a lesson his mother instilled in him early. So Richard picks up the various garments for him, draping his shirt and hose over the back of a chair, his jacket on a hanger off the door. Neat and tidy. _I was a valet for nineteen years,_ he thinks.

Thomas, in his vest and trousers, braces slung around his hips, barefoot, looks up from his seat on the bed but doesn't say anything. The glove is off. He's stretching his hand out and then curling his fingers back up, biting his lip and watching as he does it. "Hurts," he mutters.

When it had stormed in July, he'd said, _there isn't anything you can do about it,_ but that doesn't stop Richard from wishing there was.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"'S hardly your fault."

"Well, I brought you here."

"Did you also bring the weather?"

Richard goes to sit next to him, their shoulders touching. "May I?"

Thomas sets his wrist upon his knee, and Richard takes his hand between his own. Figuring the least he can do is warm him up, he closes his fingers and presses firmly around his palm. Doing this always makes him worry he'll go too far and cause him more pain than he was ever in to begin with, but he hasn't yet. And there's only so much Thomas will suffer in silence.

He starts first on his fingers, wrapping his palm around his thumb and squeezing—then his pointer finger, then his middle one, then the third and fourth at once. From there it's easy to start massaging the edge of his hand, digging with his thumbs. Thomas sucks in a breath, but when Richard stops and looks up at him he only shakes his head and says, albeit with strain in his voice, "helps."

"Say if it doesn't."

"Doesn't _yet,_ " says Thomas, "but it will, after."

To his recollection, Richard has never been _injured_. When he twisted his ankle as a boy he'd been laid up for a day at the insistence of his mother, but it had been fine thereafter. He'd gotten more rest on that occasion than when a bullet grazed his shoulder in Flanders—only skin. It had bled, and there's a scar leftover, but a dressing and morphine pills had taken care of it.

Compared to most every other man he knows, he's untouched.

"Is it really the weather?" Richard says, conversational. Getting him to talk helps, too.

"Bloody feels like it."

"John's always saying the same."

"Which?"

"Brother-in-law."

"The elbow?"

"Yeah."

Thomas grimaces as he presses between the bones in his hand, but nods when Richard tilts his head in question. He stops regardless, though, and before Thomas can say anything says, "you wouldn't happen to have cigarettes on hand."

That face counts as a smile, in the circumstances. "Jacket."

Richard lights it for him.

"Why?" he asks.

From the way he's smoking it's clear Thomas wishes he'd lit up earlier. "Why what?"

"Why's it worse in cold weather?"

"How should I know?"

Richard shrugs. "I don't know," he says, and this time he gives himself permission to be more firm as he works Thomas's hand, carefully eyeing his face for reactions. That's all he can do, really—nobody ever taught him how to do this properly, but he's done it enough times on enough people that he knows what to look for. "The medical training."

"'S twenty years out of date."

It hasn't been quite that long.

"Reckon you'd know more than I would even so," Richard tells him, spreading his fingers, again going knuckle by knuckle. "I was just somebody's batman."

"Just somebody's batman," Thomas echoes mockingly. "Don't tell me you call two marquesses and a duke 'just somebody.'"

"All's fair in love and war," says Richard.

Shrapnel doesn't care about Debrett's.

Thinking it has him suddenly conscious of his tongue in his mouth.

"And you had your share of both…"

Conscious of his breathing.

"You should've been mentioned in despatches for putting up with him," Thomas goes on. "Nevermind for doing it in the bloody trenches..."

The more he's aware of it the harder it becomes.

The human body is meant to take care of that on its own; he's not up to the task of doing the job for it—

"Dick," Thomas says, taking back his hand, "Oi. Richard." And then he's laid it upon his shoulder, squeezing. "We're in Yorkshire."

"Yeah, I know."

"I don't think you did."

Richard rubs at his chin with his hand, huffs; Thomas takes him by the wrist, then replaces his hand at his jaw with his own. The texture of his palm is more noticeable than it tends to be, twisted upon his cheek. But not unpleasant. "I didn't mean to," he says.

"I know."

He can breathe again, so long as he doesn't think about it.

Thomas is giving him a scrutinizing eye, but Richard holds his ground: the staring contest ends with a mutual nod. Thomas leaves his hand where it is. "Didn't take long to make a country boy of you, did it." Sometimes he's the worst liar Richard's ever known—that look in his eyes undoes anything the smirk or the tone might do to make him feel belittled.

"Countryman," Richard corrects. (He hadn't understood what Thomas meant about feeling old until he moved back home the year prior and had to confront the fact that his family had grown up without him present.)

"God, you need to shave..."

"When we're in York again, maybe I will."

"Maybe," Thomas repeats, in the same mocking tone as earlier. "You are lucky the rest of your face," he thumbs at Richard's lip, pushes his fingers up and into his still-damp hair, "is very nice, Mr Ellis, I'll say that."

The danger's over; his heart's slowed. He can no longer feel it pounding in his chest.

Distraction works.

Thomas leans in to kiss him; he meets him halfway.

It's not as passionate as the one on the bridge but it's still one of the more passionate they've had in ages. His mouth tastes like smoke—does he still have a lit cigarette in his other hand?—and his fingers are moving in soft circles above his ear, calming; they breathe together, somehow, making space for each other. As the kiss deepens Richard lowers one hand to his hip, settling at the join of his leg and torso, moving toward the inside of his thigh —

Thomas breaks it.

"No," he says, frozen, breathing rapid. He's at the other end of the mattress already. "Sorry, but – "

"It's all right," says Richard quickly.

He feels like an ass, but it's all right.

"Sorry."

"No need."

It's been weeks. They haven't talked about it. Richard hates the night shifts, but they do give him the space, time and privacy to take care of things he'd be sorry to deal with if Thomas were around. He tells himself it could be for any number of reasons—last year they went from once or twice a year to once or twice a month, and in June from there to once or twice a day. For a time. But that's over.

He likes to think he'd ask, if it were anything else. As it happens he can't help but wonder what he's done wrong—and wondering's all it will be, because Thomas apparently isn't inclined to broach the subject, either. If he were going to bring it up, it wouldn't be now, with him pale and near to hyperventilating at the mere suggestion of intimacy. "Can you," he starts, and though the guilt turns his stomach Richard nods and goes back downstairs. Good thing they've got the place to themselves.

Thomas comes down at teatime, and they walk to Richard's grandparents' house across the way with half a yard between them.

When they were last up here the ground had been dry.

"Do they know?" Thomas asks at the door, and Richard says, "yeah, but we're not going to remind them if we can help it."

It goes well, though. They like him. He'd been worried. Not every man like them gets to bring his lover (as if that's all it is—makes it sound like an extramarital affair, when it may as well be the marriage itself) around to meet his family.

Back at the house they retire early: there are no wandering hands as they undress and the beds stay where they are, and though it brings back the curdling feeling of _where am I going wrong_ , it's somewhat refreshing that he's able to fall asleep well before Thomas, reading a book by light of the gas lamp on the centre table, even has the mind to lie down. Now that he's not worked to the bone from seven til midnight he can't just sleep in any circumstances as he used to be able to. It's good for him, most likely, means he's not as exhausted as he once was, but sometimes it feels like two of his eight hours of sleep are made up of tossing and turning.

None of that tonight.

The day wore him out.

When he wakes up he's in a cold sweat, salt in his eyes, and his throat is dry.

There's still light in the room—just barely. Thomas must have fallen asleep earlier than he'd meant to. Thank Heaven he'd thought to top up the kerosene when they arrived. Fumbling, Richard manages to reach over, turn the knob and increase the flame to as bright as it can get—bad decision, he realises after he's done it, now he'll not be able to turn it down again.

He sits up.

If he's sitting he's safe, for some reason. Standing puts him in the trenches; lying down puts him over the top.

But it isn't as if those were the only things he ever did.

He stares at the lamp before setting his elbows upon his knees and pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, seeing red-yellow-orange behind his eyelids. He's too used to electricity. Someday they'll have that out here. They didn't have it, then, and it helps him keep his head on straight when it's around now.

In the dugouts it was all lamps. Lamps and torches; never bright enough.

He had to learn to fasten snaps, buckles and buttons without looking, check straps and belts by feel.

Easier if his touch is wanted.

Sometimes he thinks the war trained him better for valeting than Buckingham Palace did.

Outside it's pouring again—more mud. Duckboard is all well and good for the water table but not if it rains.

That was the dream: stuck under fire; walls giving way.

It was the walk. It must have been the walk, but that was nothing. Soil and puddles. If it had only been as bad as that in the trenches maybe he wouldn't still be having nightmares.

The soles get sucked off of his shoes.

He can feel his lungs expanding and contracting in his chest, a tightness in his throat as air catches in the back of his mouth.

 _Breathe_ , Thomas would say. _Yorkshire_.

No shelling in Yorkshire.

Doesn't stop him from hearing it.

He uncovers his face to stare at the lamp again. Light rids him of the sights but not the sounds—guns, footfalls, shelling, splashing. The closest he came to not-coming-home he didn't know if it would be fire or water that did it.

Maybe that was when it started.

Only so many hours you can lie down unmoving in a shell-hole without going mad.

_Breathe._

He can't. Blood pumps in his ears, louder than everything else.

Not everything.

The rain's steady.

Wet artillery is useless.

_Yorkshire._

He's lucky to be home.

Some blokes don't make it. You think you're on a train the next morning and that evening there's a bullet in your skull because you didn't keep your head down.

_Breathe._

He nearly drags Thomas to the floor, but only nearly.

"Yorkshire, Richard," he's saying, "Yorkshire, 1933, you're not going back," a hand on his belly. "Breathe here."

Richard tries to.

Another hand—the other hand—in his hair. "You have this," fingers curling through it and then gone; fabric pressed into his hands, soft and woven, "and this," breath warm at the corner of his jaw, his nose nuzzling his temple, "and this."

"Yorkshire."

"Yorkshire." Circles upon his abdomen; Thomas's palm firm. Air still stuck in his mouth. The more he tries to inhale the worse it gets. "My darling."

_Yorkshire._

No one to call him darling in Ypres.

"Fuck," but he doesn't know what more to say. He brings his hands up to his face and rubs at his eyes.

"Breathe, Richard."

"I _am_."

"No, you're not," Thomas says, firm but patient. "Has to be lower. Move my hand. Slow."

"I'm trying," he says, gasping.

"I know, darling." A kiss to the side of his forehead, then his cheek. "Better. With me." Easier than it was, before. "You're not going back," he says again. "It's over, the war's over – no, do it right, Richard." A hand around his wrist, tugging him away from his face, and then Thomas has an arm around his shoulders, the other hand still between his lower ribs. _Diaphragm._

Time gets funny when he's like this.

He doesn't know how long it is before Thomas says, matter-of-fact, _in another life he'd make for a good schoolmaster,_ "you didn't vote in the election a couple years ago."

Which means he's breathing.

Doing it right.

"It wasn't 'cause you weren't allowed," he adds. "It was because..."

And it takes him a moment, but he doesn't need to search long for the answer once he's able to look for it at all. "Westminster's a Conservative stronghold," Richard says, rote. Not many ways to say the same thing. "Cooper was unopposed."

"Before that? When he was."

"Didn't like my options."

"Even though somebody wise told you you should pick the better one, because…"

"Didn't used to be able to pick at all."

"That's right."

_Breathe._

He can now.

"Up here your sisters voted Labour," Thomas goes on. "Erm, didn't win, but they did vote. And in a few years Teddy and Ellie'll be able to."

Things that couldn't be done; people who didn't exist yet. Thomas had figured that one out all on his own.

"I'm all right," Richard says.

He is.

Thomas lets go of him and sits back; Richard turns to look at him. His hair is mussed from sleep, and his nose is pink—probably from poking him with it. "Who's the king?" he asks.

It's enough to get him to smile, almost. He feels it at the corners of his mouth. _All right,_ but not all back just yet. "Same as it was."

"Prime minister?"

"MacDonald."

"How do we like him?"

"Better than Lloyd George."

"I'll take it," Thomas says, and comes close again to wrap both arms around Richard's shoulders and bury his face into his neck from the side. "Lie down, why don't you?"

He nearly protests, but Thomas says, "I'll stay," and he doesn't refuse because he doesn't want to. Thomas turns the lamp down but doesn't extinguish the flame.

He knows what to do all on his own. Richard never has to ask.

The bed is too small for both of them, and it's Thomas taking the brunt of it—his chest to Richard's back, their legs curled, arms wrapped around his waist and chest, holding him close and still. It feels good to share, but he'd still rather be doing it in their own.

Might not have been as bad at home.

Richard murmurs, "how'd you know."

"The light woke me up," Thomas tells him, and he draws his hand up to Richard's head and strokes. It's this that brings him at last from calmed to soothed. "And you make noise."

"Do I."

"Usually, yeah."

"Never knew."

"No, you wouldn't have…"

Embarrassing.

"I don't know how you do it," he says. He's not ready to shut his eyes yet. The flicker of the lamplight casts shadows on the far wall.

"You and me both," says Thomas, still petting his hair—childish, maybe, that he likes it so much, but it does the trick. "Was never very good at it, before."

"Did you have to very often?"

"In the cottage hospital." He pauses. "I was good at it there. Just not any place else."

"Why?" Richard asks.

He _can_ talk about it, some.

As long as it's Thomas.

"Well," he says. "Er, 'cause those blokes were already injured, but we had… well," again. "This has nothing to do with you, mind, so don't take it personal, 'cause it's not how I see it anymore, but I think I must've thought they'd earned it, getting gassed or blown up or whatever – sorry, I – I'm sorry," holding him tighter, "and... that none of the rest us of had."

"I get it," Richard says.

He'd felt the same way.

Sometimes still does.

"I was a bastard," says Thomas mildly. "You wouldn't've wanted to be around me."

"You're a bastard now."

He laughs; Richard can feel it in his back and shoulders. _Making him laugh_ still feels wonderful, even after years. He's been expressing that sentiment since the week they met, though. It hasn't surfaced in a while. Richard has long wanted to ask him if he really believes so low of his past self, or if he only thinks he ought to because of what other people have told him.

But that would be too direct, for Thomas.

They'll get there someday.

"Yeah, well, the point's that it took me too long to figure out I was just as fucked in the head as everybody else."

"Not just as."

"Don't you start." He kisses the back of his neck—the skin there is sensitive and his lips are soft; he shivers. "But, erm, it wasn't til after it was all over and I grew up some… I don't think I ever did it for anybody outside of there 'til you." Another kiss. "My darling."

Always at his most sentimental in the middle of the night.

Richard doesn't know what to say, but when he's caught up in his own head like this Thomas never lets silence linger for too long: "never finished telling you about the letter I got from Master George, did I."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Thomas says, brighter than he has been. "They liked him at Eton, no surprise there, but I'd bet a tanner Lady Mary's not gonna like him carrying on about it, seeing as he doesn't get to go til next year…"

So Thomas tells him everything he'd already told him at tea the night before about young George Crawley's view on things at Downton, sometimes putting a new spin on it and sometimes not, asks him questions that make his mind put its energy elsewhere, and eventually his eyelids start drooping and his head clears.

When he wakes up, the rain has stopped. Thomas is in the other bed, sound asleep, and unlike before, the lamp is unlit—but there's still oil in the base.

He took care of it.

 _I love you,_ Richard thinks, looking at him curled up in a bed much too small for a grown man (how they managed that for years…), but he doesn't say it.

Later they take a coach to get back to York, and they're lucky enough—or rather, they planned it well enough, not many people moving between cities during churchgoing hours—to have most of it to themselves. Enough safety to chat, if they're quiet.

"...it was better than the last time I slept in an attic," Thomas is saying as they find seats near the back: two aisles. If anyone else comes along down the way Richard will move to sit next to him as though it's an inconvenience.

"Bed's nicer, I'm sure," Richard says. "Not to mention larger."

"Didn't mind the company, neither." But surely he minded missing out on half a night's sleep keeping him in the right frame of mind. "What d'you mean, larger?"

Richard raises his eyebrows. "I wasn't aware there was more than one definition of the word, Mr Barrow."

"How?"

"Servants' singles are smaller than the rest on the market." _Unless Downton does it different_ , he almost adds. Downton does do plenty of things different, but servant accommodations are not one of them.

Thomas's face scrunches up; he tilts his head to the side. "What."

"You didn't know?"

"Of course I didn't know; you're making it up."

"You were a _butler_ ," Richard says, amused.

"Beds are the housekeeper's job..."

They keep bickering for the rest of the ride back.

* * *

_28/6/31_

_T. –_

_In this letter I am going to describe a situation that you mustn't breathe a word about to anyone, and I need you to burn this after you've read it. You can wait til after you've penned a reply, but there can be no evidence that this letter ever existed nor that you ever saw it, and if for whatever reason someone outside of you and I, the Earl or somebody, brings the matter to your attention, you must pretend as though you had no clue about it. I've no idea if this is to be covered up or not, but as of yet there is no public scandal and given the nature of the matter I'd die if I were to cause one…_

_…_

_…just needed to tell somebody I was close to. I'm missing having proper friends up here. I do have plans to see F. &M. this week-end (you'll believe me when I tell you F. is very excited to be able to say "week-end" and have it mean anything) and that may settle my nerves some, but you're the one who knows me best._

_R.E._

_*_

_3/7/31_

_T. –_

_No need to wait by the telephone like a housewife and no need to board a milk train. I'm perfectly well, just a bit rattled._

_This isn't much of a letter. Probably could have telegrammed but I don't have the change nor the time to send one. Sorry, but we're busy up here. Assembly line and all. Middle of the season._

_I love you._

_Yours,_

_R.E._

_*_

_16/7/31_

_My dear T,_

_Sorry. Didn't mean to worry you. Apologies in advance for my penmanship, but I have to get the words out. I'm spinning my wheels up here._

_Mr M. has handed in his notice, citing his ailing father. He's ill, it's true, but his sister and brother-in-law are looking after him. I figured out the real reason before I needed to be told, and he did tell me. Just this morning. Thought I had the right to know the truth. I'll be succeeding him, after all, there's no doubt of that. I am well-liked by the family (I call them "the family" as if that's all they are. I must have picked that habit up from you.) and excellent at what I do._

_This isn't the first time either of us have been through something like this. Many a word is said behind closed doors. That is the nature of the work we do, and I accepted it long ago. The people we serve don't give a damn about us and we're here because we get more out of it than that. M.'s always taken it in stride and I've endeavoured to do the same, and yes it is an endeavour because there are plenty of things we hear that we disagree with. Twelve years working under him and we don't always get on, we've both thrown each other over and under and side to side, but only over the little things and never with lasting consequences. We know what we've got in common, and we stick together for it. He may be the closest thing I've got to a father and now he's made up his mind to leave over this after nearly forty years of faithful service. Started at the household as a junior footman the year I was born and came into his current position at about the age I am now. You'll see how that complicates things, surely?_

_He asked me what I'm going to do. I don't know. I have the sense that both of us leaving at the same time in all this would be revealing, and the trouble of it is that I don't_

_I am struggling to put the truth down on paper, but Thomas, I don't want to leave. This is what I have been waiting for for the entirety of my career, and I know it's my only chance. If I throw it away it will never come again, and from there the only direction is downward. Downward in everything—pay, status, privileges, everything._

_I can't do away with all of that on a matter of principle._

_You'll tell me I've been dreaming of home since we met, and I have been, I don't mean to go back on my word or to be a hypocrite. I never do. But I'm not yet forty. What the hell else am I going to do with my life if not this? I am fooling myself if I think I could find a position in Yorkshire that guarantees me work til I die. I am fooling myself if I think I could find a position in Yorkshire at all, the way things are. And I do have a guarantee here so long as I keep my cards near my chest and play them wisely. If there is any house in Britain that will always have need of servants surely it's this one, and as far as anyone but Mr W. is concerned I'm faultless. Yes, H.M. is ailing, but they'd hand me off to a H.G. or give me a pension and call it done, if it were to come to that. There is no domestic position more prestigious than this one in the world if I'm not interested in managing a household, and I'm not. Not this one and I suspect not any. And I'm just not ready to leave service. I thought I was but I'm not anywhere near it._

_But I don't want to spend the rest of the life of H.M. full aware of how he sees me and waiting on him hand and foot. I don't know how I'll be able to look myself in the mirror. We knew they all thought like this before, but we have jobs, don't we? Nowt so queer as the servants' hall at B.P. and all. But you get to above a certain steward and all that changes. Nobody likes to think about it and now we've got to. Have you ever had to look a junior footman in the eye and tell him to get over himself about something that's got your own skin crawling? Didn't use those words of course but what the hell am I supposed to say when a young man comes to me asking questions about something like this? I've got questions of my own. If I take this position, what can I do if he raises the matter? If he says something to my face? I make a habit of lying but I've never had an occasion to lie to H.M. and I don't know if I could do it. That's frivolous, though, isn't it. What I ought to be asking is what it says about me that I can't bear to leave the R.H. even after something so close to my heart as this has gone on. Nothing good, I imagine._

_See? Spinning my wheels._

_Ever your own,_

_R.E._

* * *

**York, November 1933**

To his recollection, the first time it happened was a Monday, in October. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book, Thomas chopping potatoes at his left with more focus and determination than the job required, and then he'd startled at a grumble of an expletive when he lost his grip on the knife—not cutting himself, thank Heaven, but causing frustration all the same. When Richard tried to do anything about it he was swiftly rebuffed both on grounds of incompetence and, he was to learn in the next day and a half, an especial sensitivity to feeling useless. Ironic, because all Richard could think in the moment was, _what use am I as a husband if I can't even help you to prepare dinner._

He had to browbeat him into letting him do the washing up after, too, and then it was back to work while Thomas enjoyed his day off—unfortunately coinciding with laundry—in peace.

About thirty hours after that, Richard's month and a half of taking over the housework without asking began. He'd managed about as well as could be hoped for but in the end had no qualms about handing the reins back over, except for the chest-tightening feeling that he wasn't pulling his weight.

The second time it happens is on a Wednesday, when he finally drums up the courage and puts the feeling into words.

Thomas does not address the actual problem. "You make more money than I do," he says, with a lift in his eyebrow and a metallic note in his voice that makes it clear what he would prefer to say is _Dick, what the hell are you on about._

"I don't work as hard as you for it," Richard counters. He keeps his focus on his sewing, even though it's a running stitch and he could finish the job with his eyes closed. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Thomas setting down his needle and folding up the trousers he was only halfway through hemming.

That is not an excellent omen.

"You think I can't work hard at home, too?"

"I know you work hard," _be patient, Richard._ "I'm saying you work too much."

"So, what?" Thomas says, venomous now, "the – the bloody quality's slipping, is that it? I'm _overworked,_ and I can't keep fucking house anymore?"

_Christ alive._

Richard looks up and stares.

Suddenly Thomas is _fuming._

"Did you have a bad day at work?" Richard asks after a moment, incredulous.

Thomas stands abruptly. He's already taking his cigarette case out of his pocket, and before Richard can start to apologise he's out of the kitchen and in the hall, grabbing his hat, keys and coat and halfway out the door. "Don't follow me," he calls, and then the door slams shut and the latch turns. His first few steps down the stairs are audible, but then they fade.

He's left in shock and with a lump in his throat, trying to figure out which misstep was the point of no return. His head starts in with, _what kind of husband,_ and then he stops because he doesn't know what should make up the rest of the sentence, and nor is he very confident in the beginning, for that matter.

That's the second time.

It happens again later that night, in bed.

"...I guess I'm not as better as I thought," Thomas is saying softly. He trails his fingers up and down along Richard's bare chest, almost tickling but not quite. "I'm sorry for running out on you."

It's the third time he's apologised in the last five minutes alone.

It'll run its course. It always does.

Thankfully this time he did manage to put it on hold for the intimacy he initiated, which isn't always what happens.

"I'm sorry I didn't notice," Richard murmurs.

He'd thought he was good at noticing until October.

"Well, I hide it from you, don't I."

The carelessness with which he says such things still makes him feel derailed, even after years.

 _But shouldn't I be able to tell that you are?_ he thinks, and then after a moment of consideration asks aloud.

"I should hope not," Thomas says flippantly, "'cause I put effort into it." Frustrated, Richard closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in through his mouth; Thomas touches his lips as he exhales. "I'm good at hiding it now," he adds, as if it's something to be proud of. An accomplishment.

The week they met, that first night in Downton, Richard had told him he wore his heart on his sleeve.

It was meant to be a good thing.

"Why?"

Thomas doesn't hesitate, and when he speaks it's in the same tone he uses when he has to explain something to an adult he doesn't find worth explaining at all—put out, huffy. "I don't want to worry you."

"Thomas, I'm your –"

_Third time's the charm._

"You're my what."

He puts his palm over his face and swipes, frustrated and at a loss for words. It happens so rarely he never knows what to do when it does, and sitting still in don't-know-what-to-say isn't easy at all. Ever since he was a child, it's always been the opposite problem. In his early years he couldn't go a meal without his father telling him he ought to be _seen and not heard,_ and he spent his school days getting rapped on the hands for chattering, his first months at Buckingham Palace pinching his wrist to keep from letting his thoughts slip out of his mouth.

If it isn't talking out of turn, it's sharing too much—putting too many details into a lie, speaking his mind too freely, telling a man he loves him too soon (and it takes some effort not to tell it to Thomas every time he thinks it).

 _Maybe it's the Flemish in me_ , he'd told Fred once. _They don't have so stiff an upper lip._

She'd laughed and said, _are you sure it isn't just the homosexual?_

He'd ended up with shoe polish on the cuff of his sleeve.

Richard asks, "are we married?"

Immediately Thomas pulls back, brow furrowed, head tilted.

He stares at him like that for a _very_ long time before speaking.

"I'll have to check with the county," he says flatly. "See if they have it on record."

"It was a question wanting for a yes or a no answer," Richard tells him, but his heart is beating fast and his gut is already telling him to put up a white flag.

He doesn't follow its advice just yet.

Thomas sits up all the way, then, mouth twisted and cheeks hollow, between a pout and a scowl but not nearly so confident in the eyes as he ordinarily tends to be when making faces of that sort. "We're not _husband and wife,_ " pointed but not quite sharp. No knives or needles just yet.

 _Just yet_ is always what it hinges on.

"But we could be, if you wanted."

"Yeah, the priest at St Paul's'll love it if we just waltz in and ask him to read the banns—"

Too late for the white flag already. "You're not listening," Richard says, "don't you know what I mean?'

He looks away, and he stops touching. "No," he says, sullen. And then: "or, maybe, yeah. I dunno."

Of all the ways he'd have liked this conversation to go, this is not one, but it's his own fault for starting it.

"There's no such thing as husband and husband," Thomas adds.

"Thomas, I could write you a long list of no-such-things, and you'd have known all of them to be true in one way or another."

"Yeah, well, I don't think you'll find anybody who agrees with you that queers can get married."

Richard flinches.

"Sorry."

He doesn't sound it.

Not only that, he's spouting nonsense.

"Cliff and Augie say they're married," Richard says slowly. "And John and Eugene."

"Them and nobody else I've ever met."

"Jo and Charlotte do, too, sometimes," he adds. If Thomas would think about it for more than a half a second he'd come up with examples, because Richard's now got plenty lined up in his head—not everybody uses the same words and phrases, but they're not the only blokes (people) who live like they do and want something to call it. "You remember Charlie boasting about being a husband."

"They're – "

"Fred and Molly've been calling each other wife for years, and they didn't even live together til '31 – "

"They're lesbians, Dick."

"And so they don't count as anybody?" Richard counters, sharp now.

"You know what I _meant,_ " Thomas whines.

"I don't."

"They're – look, them and, and everybody, not just the women, they're not _normal_ , are they, they're not – "

"What does it matter if they're normal?" Richard interrupts. "You and I aren't normal, Thomas, it's not meant to be normal."

"That may be, but – "

"But what?"

"What's the bloody point if nobody – God, don't look at me like – fine, nobody who's not _like us,_ you're welcome – can know about it?"

That's something of an insult.

In theory nobody can know about any of this, but that's not got anything to do with it, because it's not for anybody but the two of them. They can let people in on the secret if they like, and they have done, but it's theirs to keep and they make their choices as wisely as they can.

Plenty of people are in on it all the same, though. They've got allies. Friends and family.

The trouble is that after six years together and four to five of others knowing, Thomas still hangs his hat on what other people think of him. He always has, Richard reckons. For a little while, their first few months, he'd had trouble seeing how the pieces all fit together, because Thomas is steadfast in his belief that there's nothing wrong with who he is and what he's like, that the problem is everybody who doesn't understand making it difficult—he'd had a lot to say on the subject when they'd first met. And he's the bravest man Richard has ever known, the most resilient, having fought so many battles in his life as he has.

The discrepancy had puzzled him.

After they'd spent more time together Richard had realised that some of that confidence came from the belief, known or otherwise, that he was one of the good ones.

And that people minded the good ones less.

Not true, in Richard's experience, and the walking on eggshells required to keep up an act like that is exhausting. Add to that, pretending to be something you're not can get dangerous fast—a lesson he had to learn the hard way, himself. You can't play tricks on _you_ for very long before something slips.

It kept Thomas safe. It kept him alive, even.

But those battles are over, most of them. The ones that aren't he isn't fighting on his own.

"Well," Richard says at last. "That's what we'd have to decide, isn't it?"

Thomas shrugs.

"It'd be for us," Richard says after a moment. "Only for us, but that doesn't mean we couldn't share it." He pauses. These are words worth mulling over some. "Given the way we're set up already, I don't think we'd have to hide it from every normal person who ever drew breath."

"Dick, your family would _not_ understand if you started calling me your wife, so don't you fucking talk to me like – "

"But do you want to be my wife?" asks Richard, and it soon becomes clear he should have known better than to assume that after all that the question would come across as innocent as he'd meant it, because _innocent_ though it may be, it still resembles a loaded rifle, and Richard will admit it sounds like he's trying to catch him out.

Maybe he is.

Thomas looks like he's been slapped. "I was never _like_ you," he says shortly. "I didn't – I never ran about with my sister's frock on."

 _You said it,_ Richard thinks, _not me._ Someday Thomas will be able to bring up the subject without looking either terrified out of his mind or callously amused, but they're not quite there yet, and it… it might have been better for Richard to keep his thoughts on all this to himself until they were, but it's too late to change the subject now.

It's telling, though.

When Thomas doesn't answer questions.

"I know," Richard says softly. He feels like he's soothing a spooked horse.

"I don't think you do."

"You've said it enough times by now."

"Not if you're asking me questions like that one I haven't."

Richard bites his lip and nods. He won't point out that Thomas said it first, nor that between them Thomas is the only one who ever says it at all.

Thomas lies back down, and Richard takes his hand before he can clench it so hard it cramps, threading his fingers through his. He lets him—a good cause for relief if there ever was one, scrunching up his fingers on the back of his hand, just enough to show he's reciprocating, and then wrapping a leg around his and setting his head on his chest, curling up close.

The outbursts are over for the night, Richard predicts, and they'll be okay.

It might take a bit of time, but they will be.

"Do you know why I asked?"

Thomas turns his head into his chest, his breath warm on his skin, and his shoulders shrug. "I might do," he mumbles. Not coy, but neither uncertain.

He must.

Careful to keep his voice low, careful not to challenge, Richard asks, "what makes you think you'd be the wife?"

Luckily, Thomas doesn't try to deny it.

"I don't know," he says after a moment, quiet, and Richard wraps his other arm around him, tugs him close against his chest and squeezes. He clears his throat. "Well, I – I've thought about it. Actually."

 _Not a housewife,_ he says sometimes, though that's not entirely the same thing. But he's always the one who brings it up first, even if he acts as if Richard was thinking it all along.

"You said it once," a deep breath, his shoulders rise and fall, his belly expands against his hip, "and after that it's been – erm… er, this year, it's… what man other than me do you know who does the bloody washing?"

"That's not all it's about," Richard tells him, gentle.

Thomas shifts against him. He's silent until Richard starts drawing shapes into his arm with his fingers. "Well," small. "It can be about that, can't it?"

"It can be," says Richard. He almost says, _but it doesn't have to be._

Almost.

Because it should be, if Thomas wants it to.

"Neither of us has to be the wife," he says instead. "Could both be the husband and still think of ourselves as married." How the other couples they know do it, for the most part. Richard pauses. "If we'd like to think of ourselves that way at all."

What follows is a very long moment of quiet during which Richard thinks Thomas might have begun to fall asleep, but it ends abruptly when he slings Richard's arm off and moves to lie at his side.

He is relieved when he turns his head and finds him facing toward him.

"We don't have to settle this in a night," whispers Richard, and he reaches out to stroke his thumb along Thomas's cheekbone, his temple, his hair. It makes him smile, awkward but sincere. "I expect we can't."

"I know, but…"

"There's no rush, Thomas." He pauses. "And I don't want you to feel like you have to hide."

Not this nor anything else.

"I don't want you to worry," Thomas repeats.

"I want to worry," Richard counters. "When you've got something going on worth worrying over." Thomas lowers his gaze. "I want to look after you—that's what you do when you're lovers, isn't it? You look after each other?"

It is certainly what you do when you're married.

The twelve years of life he spent with his father alive taught him that first, and he sees it in every other couple he knows, now. In the ones who've made it last, at least.

Thomas nods.

Richard presses a closemouthed kiss to his lips, and then Thomas rolls over to be flat on his back, facing the ceiling with his eyes closed—he never sleeps that way but always tries to.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"I love you," Richard tells him in earnest, and Thomas sighs.

"Don't always know why." He fidgets as he tries to make himself comfortable; the duvet shifts over their legs. "I love you, too," he says.

Richard lies down all the way again, himself.

"You're clever," he says, offhandedly.

"Not like you are."

"You're playful."

"You're projecting."

"Hardworking."

"One of us has to be."

"Loyal."

"Being a servant'll do that to you."

"Good with children," Richard continues. "And small things."

"Like cuff links."

"Like that rabbit in the garden, I was thinking."

No pith for that one.

"...Thomas?"

"It can't help that it likes to eat lettuce," Thomas says. His voice is taught. Richard searches for his hand under the covers and takes it. "They should've put a proper fence up."

"I'm not – "

"That's the first thing anybody ever learns about gardening, isn't it? The Dixons are younger than us, somebody must've read them Beatrix Potter when they were small – "

"You don't have to defend yourself against me," Richard interrupts, and he gives his hand a squeeze.

Thomas huffs, but squeezes back.

For a time, silence.

Without the clench of his hand and the inconsistency of his breathing, Richard would wonder if he'd fallen asleep... but he's awake.

Stock-still, but awake.

"I used to shoot with my dad," he says eventually, bitter.

The Barrow family only ever comes up out of the blue for so many reasons.

"You never said," says Richard, treading careful.

"Yeah, well, I was good at it but I hated it, and then every evening we did we'd go back home and I - I never wanted to help Mum with cooking it, only he always said since I wanted to be in the kitchen the rest of the time then there was no reason I..." He can hear the strain in his voice and feel the tension in his hand as it begins to flex. "Well," and there's an awkward, breathy chuckle; Richard wants to hold him tight again but refrains. Just barely. "You'd think he'd've been happy I wanted to do something else for once, if he hated me bothering her so much at teatime…"

He wouldn't, because that isn't what it's about.

It's never what it's about.

There's never logic in prejudice.

But Thomas knows that.

"I don't hate it anymore," Thomas adds, defensive. "Erm, shooting. Not like I did when I was a boy."

"You used to load for Lord Grantham, didn't you," he says, but it's not quite a question; he knows the answer already. And it's different, he remembers, loading a rifle as compared to using it yourself, but he doesn't need to tell Thomas that.

It's been about twenty years since Richard was in a shooting party.

Fifteen since he's spent much time around guns at all.

"Yeah. Just did in December, actually… did you?"

That one Thomas may not know in turn. "His Majesty has four loaders," Richard says. "Two at both houses."

Had, maybe. Might be one each now.

"I'll bet you were glad of that."

"Wouldn't've lasted in the job, elsewise, after I got back."

If he'd been valet to anybody else...

"Yeah." A pause. He unclasps their hands and draws his arms in to his chest, giving in and curling up on his side like always. They'll sleep soon. "I was always gonna be the wife, wasn't I," he says quietly. "Guess he knew it before I did."

Richard's heart wrenches.

"We don't have to settle this in a night," he repeats.

"But we will settle it, won't we? Sometime."

"If you like."

"Maybe I do."

He's calmer, now, enough that Richard feels it's likely okay to finally close his eyes and calm down himself. It's late, he's sure. It's been late—they probably ought to have gone to sleep when they'd first gotten into bed, but he's not about to complain about what they did instead. Far from it.

And all in all, he thinks he feels good about the conversation. They laid some foundations.

They might both have errors in their ways at times, but Thomas is still the best man Richard's ever known as far as _communication_ goes. Naturally, living together makes things different than they'd be for other couples-like-them, they've got different problems and different things to chat about, but he supposes the comparison can still be made. It was the same when they were apart, after all, and they've only kept it up now they're not.

Their first night together in London he'd said, _I like to know what's what_.

_Always good to be on the same page._

_Yeah, but – I mean, are we – I don't want to make you feel like you have to..._

So they'd decided they weren't going to see other people, a first for Thomas and a second for Richard, and that if either of them changed their minds about that they'd simply end it: they'd both been hurt too many times by false promises and broken agreements to continue bothering if they stopped wanting the same things.

They haven't yet.

Not even now. It'd be bad timing, if so—in a month they'll have lived together for half of a year, but then, the danger always was that they wouldn't work in close quarters. Richard had spent most of spring on edge about that, but it's turned out even better than he'd dared hope for (and hoping has never been very difficult for him).

He shouldn't ever have worried.

"You should propose," Thomas says suddenly.

Startled, Richard opens his eyes and lifts his head up to look at him, but he's still got his eyes shut.

"If we're gonna be that," he continues, "you should propose."

"What, now?"

"No, Dick, it's one in the bloody morning."

"Right."

But he feels as if he's just flung open the curtains and found dawn.

* * *

_8/5/32_

_My heart,_

_Only four days have passed since I had you, and yet I find myself yearning as though it has been years..._

_…_

_…so you'll think of me, til we meet again._

_Longing for you._

_X_

_*_

_25/7/32_

_Dearest Thomas,_

_The aubergines, tomatoes and cucumbers in Mum's garden are flowering. You never think of vegetables having blossoms, but these ones certainly do. Ruthie keeps trying to eat what fruit has started to show up and she's only been successful with the green tomatoes. Can't get enough of them. Dot's been begging us not to let her near the beds but it's as if you blink and she's got five of them in her mouth already. You know more about children than I do, so you'll have to come over next chance you get and see what can be done._

_The storm yesterday (did you get the same one by any chance?) did a number on one of the neighbours' trees, and I got roped into the cleanup last night with Ted, Owain and the rest. I can't say I'm sorry for it, but as I haven't done anything so physical as that in years my back is making a fuss. I'm not a boy anymore—nor am I a young man, though there are plenty of those around to do most of the work for me if need be. And young women. I wish I'd been here to see all these children grow up. Everyone's been in and out of Mum's house (Hannah's still making room at her place) since the day I arrived and while I know everybody, they don't all know me. Teddy's as tall as I am. Ellie has a beau. Caroline's waiting to hear if she got into the normal school or not and I think if she did we'll all bleed our savings dry to make it happen. They've got so much more going for them than we did at their age. I never expected to be in anything but service—that's what the second son always does, isn't it? Ted started out at Windsor Castle of course but he only made it eight years before he came back up to woo Charlotte, and now they've got grown children. When you only see your nieces and nephews once a year it's hard not to think of them as infants, but they haven't been small for a long time. Although I guess you'd know what's going on with them already, wouldn't you? You've been telling me, but it isn't the same as seeing it for myself._

_On the note of the weather, rain smells different in Yorkshire. I'd forgotten how much. The last time I was home in July it was for a few hours in 1927. So much has changed, and at the same time it feels like nothing has at all._

_That's five years of you in my life, of course. Best five years I've ever had._

_How's Downton? You, the house, the estate, everyone. It's been only a few days since I last saw you and I'll get to see you again in a few weeks—when have we ever been able to say that and mean it—but I'd like to know just the same. But don't go thinking I miss service. It's hard to believe I was valeting only week ago; it already feels like it's been years. I hope the trouble with Miss Baxter has been resolved by now. You two never seem to stay cross for long, so I'm sure it has. We are looking forward to having Billy down on Tuesday. He's at the right age to do things other than visit his family on his half-days, so thanks for persuading him to come by. My arrival wouldn't have been enough on its own. I'm not the fun uncle._

_Send my regards to the botanicals for at last figuring out what I've known all along. Baffled it took you by surprise. I've met Daisy twice and Ivy never and even I knew._

_We're in a new era, Thomas, you and I. Catching up with the rest of the world. Don't worry about the rest. You've got plenty of people who want to take care of you if it comes to it, but I reckon you're undervaluing yourself—they're not going to be anxious to get rid of you at the Abbey anytime soon, I can assure you. When you go you'll go when you wish and as you like._

_Here's to another five._

_For ever and always,_

_Richard_

* * *

**York, December, 1933**

He's fidgeting—by twisting the ring on his left hand back and forth with the thumb and forefinger of his right. When he tilts his hand from side to side, the metal catches the glow of the fire.

"I can get you something else," Thomas says. "Something you can wear. A wristwatch or something." A pause. "Could probably _make_ you one of those, if you wanted."

He could, and Richard would gladly accept it if so, but…

"I want this," he says. "Wearing it now, aren't I?"

"You couldn't wear it _out..._ "

But he looks awfully pleased with himself, and so he should.

"But I can wear it at all." He takes a deep breath, but he still can't stop himself from playing with it—it isn't nerves that's making him do so, is the thing. "Thanks."

"I wasn't joking when I said I'd start a tally if you kept saying that."

"I never doubted," Richard replies. "Go right ahead." He'll stop when Thomas stops brightening up every time he does, and he suspects that won't be any time soon. "I love it," he adds, for good measure. "I love it, Thomas."

"Well," says Thomas, looking away with a half-smile at his lips, awkward. "That's me satisfied, then."

"It's perfect."

"Now you're just flanneling..."

Hardly, but Richard knows when to stop where compliments are concerned. "I mean it, Thomas, thanks."

Thomas turns back toward him and cocks an eyebrow; he leans over to grab a slip of discarded newsprint (he's neater than Richard when opening parcels, it's all folded up nicely), then turns out his pockets for a pencil. "I'm starting four times ago," he says, "and I'll have you know that's very generous of me," putting marks in the margin, tongue poking out of his mouth. Richard can't help but laugh, feeling warm, sparkling almost. He attributes the feeling to the combination of mulled wine and good sentiment.

"Well," he says. Thomas glances up at him, grinning. "You've got something new, now, maybe it's time you can get rid of that old thing," with a jerk of his head toward the watch—from last Christmas, purchased broken and _beyond repair, you won't find anybody around what knows that make these days;_ it's the same principle as giving Hannah a jigsaw puzzle—and its attached key chain, now on the floor within Thomas's reach.

Up until a moment ago he'd just been holding the ring in his hand for the last quarter of an hour at least; he picks it back up now.

"Dick, if you think you will ever convince me to do that you're even more daft than I thought."

Worth a go.

"And you'd be miserable if I actually did," Thomas adds. "Don't you deny it."

Richard shrugs. He says, "but you do like it?"

"Blimey, you _are_ daft…"

Thomas gets up from the floor (forty-four and still more agile than Richard's ever been) and sits next-to-nearly-on-top-of him on the sofa, then presses a kiss to his ear. "Yes, I like it, you fool."

"We still don't know if it fits," Richard tells him.

He huffs. " _You're_ impatient," as if he'd not begged and badgered him to try his own; he tugs off his glove (someday he'll leave it off around the house all the time, not just at night) and shakes his hand out… then presses the ring into Richard's palm and holds out his hand. "You have to do it," he says, very serious.

"You didn't do mine."

"Well, I should have."

Richard raises his eyebrows.

Thomas raises his back. "We'll do it over after this, come on."

"Will we?" asks Richard, but he takes him by the hand even so, meeting his eyes. "With this ring – "

Immediately Thomas presses his right hand to his mouth, stifling him. "We don't have all night."

"I like the pomp and circumstance," says Richard against his fingers, and then it's done in but an instant—it does fit, despite how they'd worried. Right up to the knuckle, singular though it may be. If he's not mistaken Thomas is approaching teary-eyed.

He won't be the one to mention it first, but he knows it's there.

"Doesn't look so nice as yours," Thomas says, with a long, slow breath out that betrays his true feelings.

"I like your hands," in earnest. It's not the same as arguing. "It looks good."

"Yeah. Well."

"I'll feel insulted if you say any more on the matter," he tells him, and that gets another half-smile and a shake of his head; he bites his lip.

"I'm not going to cry," he says. _Not mistaken._ Whenever he says that Richard takes it as a warning to prepare for him to do just so; he squeezes his hand. "I'm _not._ "

"Didn't say anything, did I?"

"No, but…"

"It looks good," Richard repeats. "I am happy with my choice, Mr Barrow," and Thomas sort of chuckles; he squeezes back, then lets go to wipe at his eyes with both hands.

"I love you," Richard tells him. Thomas doesn't say anything, only nods, so he takes his hand again, left to left, back to palm; as their fingers move there is a clink of metal that is at once grating to the ear and the most wonderful sound he's ever heard. "I'll be happy with it if you are."

"I am happy with it," almost petulant. He's mumbling. "Best gift I ever got."

"You'll tell me, if it changes?"

"It won't," Thomas says, more firmly now. "It won't, only I… well, you can't blame me, can you, you're the only person who…"

He trails off, then picks up the glove again; Richard waits for him to continue but nothing comes.

"It's for us," he says, not for the first time. He almost goes on, too, because they've discussed this what must be dozens of times by now and he knows the routine by heart, but at the exact moment he opens his mouth something dawns on him.

It dawns on both of them, and Thomas puts the glove back on.

"Fancy that," he says, stretching out his fingers. "Nobody'll be the wiser."

It's almost too good to be true.

Almost.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thomas is using the word "layabout" like 2-3 years in advance of its first written attestation
> 
> 2\. The joy I felt when I looked it up and July 22nd, 1933 really WAS a Saturday... unparalleled
> 
> 3\. Return of the gay & lesbian OCs! Not just in Yorkshire anymore!!! Hope those who care had fun picking out the recycled ones. :-) Anyway I feel like it's a common gay experience if you're out & in a local community that you're gonna be at Most two degrees removed from your ex at any given time. Even in the 30s. Poor Richard. Also oh my GOD does Thomas need gay friends.....
> 
> 4\. Lots of spaghetti thrown at the wall here as far as IRL historical events & facts go! What actually happens doesn't matter it's ~how they feel about it ~ but, events referenced in this include:  
>  \- King George V's convalescence in Bognor after he went septic in November '28 (convalescence began Feb 9, '29)  
>  \- All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film after the 1929 novel) sparking more conversation about the Great War leading up to its release in April of that year  
>  \- the 7th Earl of Beauchamp's outing that resulted in a well-contained scandal (it only rocked Buckingham Palace & a few bits of Parliament, IE: the only bits of high society where people didn't already Know), a called-off engagement & the most well-known homophobic comment attributed to KGV  
>  \- staff layoffs at Buckingham Palace in '32  
> 4a. As of the 1900s servants' single beds were four inches narrower than standard singles according to Alison Maloney in _Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants_ at 2ft 6in wide; this is the same size as camp beds in the British Army in WWI & WWII. I feel like Thomas would probably know this but I thought it was cute, so I left it in.
> 
> 5\. I know trauma hits everybody differently but man that thing where you just get baby triggers over a period of time like a day or a week or whatever in waves and you don't _really_ think about it until one of them just hits you harder than the rest and then looking back it's like, oh of course? Man. Hope it wasn't too abrupt/too much for some people, I wanted to foreshadow/prepare the reader but also treat it delicately and there's a fine line there I think.
> 
> 6\. In this series like 75% of the Royal Household was already gay, because realistically Downton Abbey is gonna be like the only great house in England with only one (1) gay male employee and I started writing Gay Royal Households in like, January I think? Mostly just to spite JF. but then I found out this week that [everybody in the Royal Household was probably actually gay](https://combeferre.tumblr.com/post/617777493756264448/) (check out the tag on that post for a bit more content there). Really fucked up labour & hiring practices there if you think about it for longer than two seconds! But yeah I actually wrote the letters in both this and SHIFIY(TADEWTGOE) back in February? Timing! Also until 1990ish servants in the Royal Household would get fired if they were married so JF really was not being very galaxy brain when he came up with that alternate ending
> 
> 7\. Anyway everybody who works at Downton Abbey can be gay now too. As a treat.
> 
> 8\. This fic is a fuck you to everybody on like, YouTube and Facebook comments who apparently think that it was impossible to be a gay couple living together until 2013 + that Peak Possible Happiness for Thomas is to work at Downton til he dies and write letters to Richard but like, never see him. They're married, assholes!
> 
> 9\. When I was 2 I went into the backyard all the time and I ate so many green tomatoes and it made my family absolutely furious. We stan little children who eat green tomatoes.
> 
> 10\. Find me on tumblr as [@combeferre](https://combeferre.tumblr.com)!


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